Internet Tax in Denmark

[Musketeer]

No disrespect intended to the above, but your liscensing and taxation system are not the fault of my government, nor my President Bush.

While we don't have a computer liscensing fee such as the one proposed in your country, but we of course have our own system of taxes. We also have fees established at all levels of government that were created for one reason or another, but were never removed. They may as well be taxes, and in this case, yours may as well be called that too. Seems like they are just avoiding the word 'TAX'

Now, I don't care for my taxes either, but I wouldn't trade my country, the good 'ole USA for any other.

I sincerely hope the fees are not implemented in your country of Denmark.

I agree. I hope the fees are defeated. At the same time I think we in America are blamed for enough without adding in fees in Denmark for computer ownership.

The concept that a government can just take taxes because it wants to is one that needs to be rectified. What real service would the Government provide in exchange for this new fee, I bet nothing...

Finally the issue of a flat fee and being fair. Fairness is in the eye of the beholder. It is impossible to define. One person thinks taking an equal weight of grain from each person is fair while another thinks taking an equal percentage is fair. The very use of the term "fair" is meaningless as it has no concrete definition. The only time the meaning of "fair" can be agreed on is when the two parties involved agree on the point being negotiated already. You can say the flat fee is something you disagree with but to throw the term fair or unfair into the argument means nothing.

 

[Musketeer]

It makes me sad when I hear of other countrys in Europe (or anywhere else) succumbing to Americas foolish shortsighted & selfish (IMO) ways.

Well one could then always (IMO) move to another country of their choice and leave the United States of America. But then again, already being in the Peoples Republic of California you have already started the process.

 

[d4v]

You guys better stop the fat bastards or this will spread worldwide.

 

[dktekno]

I have already contacted BBC, CNN and some other various international newspapers and other media.

I even contacted the European Court of Jurisdiction.

 

[Grobut]

Again Mr Moe, you are missing the point, the fee is not an emulation of the US, it is the result of the ecenomic troubles brought on by years of trying to follow a hard-line capitalist economic plan.

In other words, the troubles start well before this fee, now we're seeing the government scramble to try and suck some extra cash out of us without breaking their election promises.


They promised "No more taxes", thats why they won, but they never said who would pay for it all.. turns out its the poor, we used to have some of the worlds best systems for getting the unemployed and the handicapped and sick back into the job market, thats all gone now..
Hospitals have cloused all over the country, not enough funds to run them anymore, and the big hospitals who now have to lift the extra burden have to do so with no additional aid.
The poor are getting poorer, the middle class is eroding, the cost of living is rising, more and more danes have to put themselves in debt to make things run.

The stink is all around us, this is a new "potato diet", brought on by a government that thought they could hack it as capitalists.. well, suprice suprice, for capitalism to work, you need the money to start with, and we dont have it, Denmark is not a big enough country to be held aloft by our industry.

 

[Grobut]

And for people like me, who allready pay the tax because i have a TV, i have to pay for this twice because i also own a computer

That IS theft, i allready payed my dues, now i have to pay double.


The tax could be acceptable if it where only for TV tuners, tasteless but acceptable, but this is highway robbery!

If this goes through, i think i'll actually buy a TV tuner card and get gid of my TV, then atleast i'll get billed correctly.

 

[dktekno]

And here we get the very grotesque part:

In Denmark we have something named Tax Stop. That means no more taxes.

This is what the Minister of Culture, Brian Mikkelsen said in August 2005:

http://www.computerworld.dk/art/29237

But the new duties as license on electronic apparatus like computers would be against the Tax Stop, said the Minister of Culture to Ritzau.

The government itself made the Tax Stop. And the government themselves applaud Brian Mikkelsen and ignore their very own rules they promised the citizens.

 

[MrBunsy]

using electiricty (thanks Thomas Edison!).

Sorry mate, but it was Godalming which had the first power station and electric streetlights, and Mr Swan who invented the lightbulb. (And I'm pretty sure it was Edision who was a fan of DC power stations too) As much as the US has contributed to the world, it was Britian that started the Industrial Revolution, and it's only recently we've fallen out of the world scene.

However, by the sounds of it Denmark is in a mess trying to emulate much of the Western world. A more socialist attitude would probably help.

Governments have taken taxes for no good reason for hundreds of years. The tax which used to pay for the navy originally only was taken from the people living on the coast. When England went to war with.. (probably France, can't remember) they took the tax from everyone in the country. It's not a new idea by any means.

 

[Grobut]

However, by the sounds of it Denmark is in a mess trying to emulate much of the Western world. A more socialist attitude would probably help.

Socialism is exactly how we have survived the industrial revolution and the growing international influence, without it we would probably have been a third world country today.. how quick they forget, and look at us now

When you are this small, you have to pool your resources to get by alongside the giants, its the only way, and it has been our way for a long time, trying to break that cycle brought us the depression in the 80's, and it'll do the same for us now, its nothing short of foolishness, our only national resource IS the common man, and his education, it is not our industry, it will never have a fair fight against the rest of the world, we must rely on innovation, not raw production.

 

[Musketeer]

Who Pays The Bills?

Who Pays The Bills?

Even with socialism somebody still has to pay the bills. If the country has no resources and is not adding value to something that allows it to prosper then it will fail eventually and no amount of socialism will stop that.

The drive to invent, create and succeed comes not from socialism though but from capatalism. Why am I going to work my ass off so that the govenrment can reap all the benifitt and redistribute the wealth I have created to those who have not earned it? Better to take my idead and creativity to a place that will allow me to succeed and enjoy it. All socialist systems will eventually collapse as more and more people use the "safety net" as a "hammock." I do not know how many of the European nations who are not succeeding economically expect to keep their welfare state systems running without cash being generated?

No real capatalist would support the fee being imposed ont he Danes, but a socialist would have no problem with it as I see it.

 

[Grobut]

Even with socialism somebody still has to pay the bills. If the country has no resources and is not adding value to something that allows it to prosper then it will fail eventually and no amount of socialism will stop that.

The drive to invent, create and succeed comes not from socialism though but from capatalism. Why am I going to work my ass off so that the govenrment can reap all the benifitt and redistribute the wealth I have created to those who have not earned it? Better to take my idead and creativity to a place that will allow me to succeed and enjoy it. All socialist systems will eventually collapse as more and more people use the "safety net" as a "hammock." I do not know how many of the European nations who are not succeeding economically expect to keep their welfare state systems running without cash being generated?

No real capatalist would support the fee being imposed ont he Danes, but a socialist would have no problem with it as I see it.

The last 50 years of danish history prooves you wrong, first of all people where not allowed to use the welfare system as a hammock as you put it, if you where unemployed too long the government put you to work, when i was unemployed in.. 2000 i think it was, i was not just sitting on my bum watching TV, i was renovating playgrounds in my local area, earning my welfare check, aswell i had plenty of options to get more education so i was in a better position to get a new job, THAT is how you make a welfare system, but the current government has destroyed that, now they just toss a check at people and say "go get a job" like in the US, and not suprisingly, it works just as poorly here as it does there.. way to go, bravo.. you where sitting with one of the worlds finest systems and decided to replace it by one known to fail.. great job Minister Fogh!

Second of all, danish socialism is nothing like you think, its not like the old USSR, we have allways kept a good balance between capitalism and socialism, ofcourse there has allways been some bugs in the system but it has worked well for us, so well infact we have allways scored high on the various "best places to live" and "wealthiest countries" lists despite our pitifull size, i could spend the next houer trying to explain why its nothing like your bleak USSR'ish outlook on it, and why pure Capitalism wont work for a country as small as ours, but i'll rather use it filling my belly with dead cow and plant matter (tis dinner time!).

 

[Donut]

Even with socialism somebody still has to pay the bills. If the country has no resources and is not adding value to something that allows it to prosper then it will fail eventually and no amount of socialism will stop that.

The drive to invent, create and succeed comes not from socialism though but from capatalism. Why am I going to work my ass off so that the govenrment can reap all the benifitt and redistribute the wealth I have created to those who have not earned it? Better to take my idead and creativity to a place that will allow me to succeed and enjoy it. All socialist systems will eventually collapse as more and more people use the "safety net" as a "hammock." I do not know how many of the European nations who are not succeeding economically expect to keep their welfare state systems running without cash being generated?

No real capatalist would support the fee being imposed ont he Danes, but a socialist would have no problem with it as I see it.

We do that in the US, where a portion of our hard earned money(taxes) goes to welfare.
Sounds like youd rather "lord" your wealth over people, rather than just making ends meet, buy a few USEFUL luxury items(PC, TV, stereo, ect), put a sizeable portion of usabele income aside for future(retirement)/emergency use, and use whats left over to help others get to where you are(buying food/clothes, ect, for those that cant afford them.
Only if they shared your attitude about what to do with their money.

 

[Tomcat_ha]

I wouldnt mind a puter tax but it should be different for every income level.

 

[REZ]

I'm not tryin to single you out and take a stab at 'cha, but..

No real capatalist would support the fee being imposed ont he Danes

wrong. Real Capitalists will go to any means to make profit, regardless.

pure Capitalism wont work for a country as small as ours

Pure Capitalism wont work for any country, big or small.. some may last longer, but the end result will always be the same... Capitalism needs boundries... enforced checks and balances. The ones that are set in place in the US have been slowly whiddled away, and continue to be.. thank you lobbyists! Thank you mega-conglomerates! Your unfettered greed is sinking our ship! But hey, you've got the one liferaft..

 

[Grobut]

I wouldnt mind a puter tax but it should be different for every income level.

The uproar is not about the tax per see, its the same tax we have been paying for decades, if you own a TV you pay this tax, its really that simple.

The problem is, now they want us to pay it twice! if you own a TV and have internet, you will be paying the TV tax twice, and thats just not fair, your not getting twice the amount of TV, so why should you pay twice the tax?

 

[MrBunsy]

Second of all, danish socialism is nothing like you think, its not like the old USSR, we have allways kept a good balance between capitalism and socialism, ofcourse there has allways been some bugs in the system but it has worked well for us, so well infact we have allways scored high on the various "best places to live" and "wealthiest countries" lists despite our pitifull size, i could spend the next houer trying to explain why its nothing like your bleak USSR'ish outlook on it, and why pure Capitalism wont work for a country as small as ours, but i'll rather use it filling my belly with dead cow and plant matter (tis dinner time!).

It sounds similar to British Socialism, which did (does?) work very well. Personally I think it's the best system, it's mostly capitalist as in you can go out there and make your oodles of cash. But if you fail for reasons not of your own fault, and cannot find work then the state supports you. Britian never really got to the state where no-one was earning enough to support those who couldn't earn, which is why it continued to work.

Does Denmark have an equivilant of the NHS? A free health service? I'm guenuenly curious, apart from that it makes Lego, I've realised I actually know nothing about Denmark.

 

[Quietus]

Well one could then always (IMO) move to another country of their choice and leave the United States of America. But then again, already being in the Peoples Republic of California you have already started the process.

These are the things he said that struck I nerve with me:

This new announcement has been supported by even the leftist part of Denmark and only shows that the political situation in Denmark has been pulled dramatically to the conservative right, where not even the leftists are leftists anymore but just merely trying to soften the situation.
Racism and pro-bush and pro-capitalism is on the extreme rise in Denmark allowing for a wider and wider gap between rich and poor.
There were once a litle welfare state in Denmark. Now it is being destroyed. You see super fast smart sports cars and SUV's on the roads, among cheap and porly made old cars. The middle class is shrinking and the gap is widening. Poor people become even more poor while the rich is getting even more rich.

Such is the nature of humans, (the rich want to get more rich and the poor complain about not being rich). The things that alarms me are the trends in other countries toward American "culture"...What culture is that? The culture of materialism (buy new ****) at all costs and the more you own the "greater" you are?...Incessant ego stroking behavior, that's a BS childish existence to me. Of course not all Americans are like this but an alarming amount of them are (majority). No I'm not a liberal either as I think most politicians are just 2 sides of the same coin or "cut from the same cloth" they say. Basically I despise politicians for the fact that they'll say or do anything to get elected and don't truly care about "serving the people" It's more like "serving themselves".

PS: I know political discussions are forbidden so this will be my last post about it. No worries.

 

[Grobut]

It sounds similar to British Socialism, which did (does?) work very well. Personally I think it's the best system, it's mostly capitalist as in you can go out there and make your oodles of cash. But if you fail for reasons not of your own fault, and cannot find work then the state supports you. Britian never really got to the state where no-one was earning enough to support those who couldn't earn, which is why it continued to work.

Does Denmark have an equivilant of the NHS? A free health service? I'm guenuenly curious, apart from that it makes Lego, I've realised I actually know nothing about Denmark.

All medical treatment, save cosmetical or dental (well, dental is free for children), is free for all citizens.

 

[=GG= Mr Moe]

Again Mr Moe, you are missing the point....

Ahhh, I do get it, I got it before. I am only stating I don't like the implication of some of those posting, whether they meant it or not.

That is all, it really is that simple....

And again, good luck with everything over there...you really do have my sympathy.

 

[scuba22]

All medical treatment, save cosmetical or dental (well, dental is free for children), is free for all citizens.

Americas great disgrace, can spend half a trillion a year on the military and its adventures, yet have tens of millions with no health insurance whatsoever.

Need national healthcare in this country in the worst possible way.